Augmented Reality Experts Say Google Glasses Video Is Over-Hyped

This past week Google released a demo video of Google Glasses, an augmented reality project in the Google X Labs. The video showed an individual wearing glasses where the lenses would show him icons, maps, and other overlays. However the Google Glasses in the video were not really glasses because they lacked full lenses and it involved small rectangular pieces of glass hovering over the right eye of the person wearing them.
The hardware in the photos of the video does not appear to be capable of delivering the same augmented reality experience in the video. Pranav Mistry, an MIT Media Lab researcher that is famous for his TED Talks speech about the SixthSense wearable computing system said “The small screen seen in the photos cannot give the experience the video is showing.”

Georgia Tech’s director of the Augmented Environment Labs Blair MacIntyre agreed with Mistry. “You could not do AR with a display like this. The small field of view, and placement off to the side, would result in an experience where the content is rarely on the display and hard to discover and interact with. But it’s a fine size and structure for a small head-up display.”

The Project Glass video is a concept video, but MacIntyre believes Google may have created a level of over-hype and over-expectations that their hardware cannot live up to. Another issue is that a display that shows overlaid graphics may perform find indoors, but when walking outside in the brightness, the imagery would be washed out.